Federal Trade Commission

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A bossy business scam

August 25, 2014

by

Nicole Vincent Fleming

Consumer Education Specialist, FTC

You get an email from your boss’s boss requesting that you make a wire transfer to a new vendor. The email is marked urgent, so you ignore the 20 others that need your attention to take care of it. You handle wire transfers all the time, and you’ll definitely score points for responding so quickly, right? Maybe not.

In a recent scheme, sometimes called “masquerading,” a hacker poses as a senior executive and asks an employee to complete a financial transaction, like a confidential business investment or a payment to a vendor. Once money is wired to a bogus account, it can be nearly impossible to recover.

In some cases, the emails are spoofed by making subtle changes, so it’s difficult to distinguish a fake address from a legitimate one. For example, johnexample.com looks a lot like johnexanple.com. In other cases, the hackers break into an organization’s email system and send urgent requests from legitimate accounts.

Scammers like to mix it up. They may pose as vendors who have existing relationships with the company and send emails to “update” their account information. Some masqueraders try to commit this fraud on the phone, posing as the CFO, comptroller or CEO to intimidate an employee.

Want to make sure your company doesn’t fall victim to a masquerade scam?

Comments

i can relate too what you are saying,i dont work in an office,but i have gone thru an ordeal,dealing with an imposter,they are very careless after now ,and i haven't heard anything about my money,as they were telling me.im looking for further help to solve this scammer issue.what info. that i have i am in need of putting in a complaint,and hopefully i will get some answers back.--thank you for having a site for the american consumer.---E.S.Swain--thank you.

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